


My Ticket to Hell Is Home With You

by CrossroadProphet



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrossroadProphet/pseuds/CrossroadProphet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint looked at the photos and then between the translator and Danvers with something like panicked amusement. <i>“You think I did this? Lady, my hands shake and I need a dog to cross the street, but you think I’m what? Some international assassin?”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Ticket to Hell

He was alone in the room, but he knew he was being watched. He could see the annoying blink-blink-blink of the camera recording him from the corner of the room and was staring at himself courtesy of the two-way mirror across from him.

What he saw was a calm man, handcuffed to a stainless steel interrogation table. What he felt was a lot less calm, a hurricane of agitation and nerves. His fingers twitched against his palms and he knew some suit was taking note of that from behind the glass. Maybe not as calm as he wanted to appear.

\--

These were the facts, the ones printed out years ago, when typewriters were the norm, and put on permanent file: Clinton Francis Barton was a child runaway. His parents were in a fatal car crash when he was six and he and his older brother, Charles Bernard Barton, were sent to an orphanage when none of their surviving family members offered to take them in.

He disappeared from the system a year later with his brother and didn’t reappear until he was nineteen when he was admitted to a hospital outside of Hoboken, New Jersey.

\--

Clint had stopped looking around the tiny rectangle room what felt like hours ago, but was probably only twenty minutes or something, his internal clock was off. He sat in one of two chairs at the table. There was one door and that stupid window. Nothing else to see. There was a buzzing in his ears, but that wasn’t because of the room.

Instead he watched the glass, pretending he could see shapes on the other side. “I am not talking,” Clint said, each word carefully pronounced and perhaps a bit louder than conversationally normal. “I want my dog.”

\--

The missing years of his files are surprisingly simple: Clint and Barney had run away and found the circus, because wasn’t that what little lost boys did? The circus became their home and they worked to earn their keep.

Clint found mentors in two of the performers, Swordsman and Trick Shot. They taught him swordplay and throwing techniques and, above all else, how to turn some sticks and string into a deadly performance.

By time he was sixteen, Clint was an accomplished archer and a headline act in the circus, the Amazing Hawkeye. By time he was seventeen, Clint found a love for pyrotechnics and things that went boom that he began to incorporate into his acts. And when he was nineteen, Clint ran into an accident with a trick arrow that resulted in a trip to the Hoboken Medical Center and cost him most of his hearing.

\--

The door to the interrogation room opened quietly and Clint jumped when the lady officer slammed it shut. He watched her walk over to the table and pull up the seat across from him. She had wavy blonde hair pulled back, wore a sweet perfume that Clint couldn’t name, and had sky blue eyes. She did not have his dog.

“I want my dog.”

“Most people ask for a lawyer,” she said with a smile meant to disarm. She was talking slow, giving Clint the chance to read her lips. “I am Detective Danvers. We have an ASL translator on his way, Mr. Barton.”

“Dog,” he said again, rattling the chains holding him as he crossed his arms. “Want my dog.”

\--

After the accident, Clint dropped off the grid again when the circus decided they had no room for a deaf kid. By that point, Barney had already left for bigger and better things and Clint was, for the first time, on his own. He had some money saved up, but it wasn’t enough, not to live on his own or to afford the hearing aids he needed. But he had his bow and stupid, dumb innocence.

Clint tried out being a vigilante in the Big Apple, but it turns out vigilanting doesn’t make much money and no one really trusts a guy running around with a bow.

So he turned to the only other skill he’d picked up in the circus: pick-pocketing. That was how he met Phil.

\--

Clint was stubborn, and the cop was short on temper. She had come with a file, the bare bone records of Clint Barton, a thicker mystery file, and a notepad. So far both files remained closed, but the notepad was spread open between them. She’d tried writing out her questions since Clint appeared incapable of lip reading, but he was refusing to acknowledge her signs.

“This is harassment,” he said when she grew frustrated and slapped her pen on the desk. “I do not know why I am here.”

She flipped to a page in the notebook that read in big block letters: **READ!** Danvers pointed to it and slid the pad across to him.

This time he did glance at the page. He put his palm over the page and slid it back as far as his cuffs would allow. “I need my dog.”

\--

Phil had seemed like an easy target. He was well dressed and preoccupied by his phone and Clint had been able to make out the wallet in his back pocket easy. He’d tailed the guy for a bit before moving with a crowd to brush past him and snag the wallet.

Or he had tried to do that. He instead got a quick palm to his nose when Phil turned on him and a shove into an alley. Clint had stumbled and swore and clutched at his nose. He tasted blood and had another curse on his lips that stopped at the sight of a handgun trained to his forehead.

Phil didn’t shoot. He interrogated Clint instead, asking who sent him and despite the fact Clint could very easily understand him, without any ASL training he’d become quite good at reading lips, the question had thrown him for a loop. He apologized profusely through the blood, promised that he hadn’t been sent by anyone, and watched as Phil tried to make sense of the skinny blonde he’d knocked on his ass.

And somehow, Clint would later claim it was his undeniable charm, Phil lowered the gun and took the kid home. Phil would never say it was because he felt bad for scrawny strays, but that would be the most obvious truth.

\--

Almost an hour after Clint’s initial arrest, the door opened on a clean cut man in slacks and a gray sweater vest holding the harness of a dog that might be a Golden Retriever if you squinted at it long enough. “Lucky!” The dog pulled out of the man’s grasp and bounded over to Clint, immediately putting his head in Clint’s lap and thumping his tail excitedly on the table leg.

He elected to look away from the detective and the newcomer, smiling down at his dog instead. If he strained, Clint could almost hear what they were saying. It was definitely lacking, with more words missing than not, but it was more than the detective probably thought he could hear. The man was his translator. The woman wanted answers from Clint yesterday.

He looked up again and the man had taken the seat Danvers had occupied moments ago so that the detective could pace the length of the two-way. _“Hello, Mr. Barton,”_ the man signed and said. _“I apologize for the wait.”_

 _“Apologize for the rest of this crap,”_ Clint signed, glaring at Danvers. His motions were stuttering and limited by the chains. He gave them a good rattle for emphasis.

The translator relayed and it was Danvers’s turn to glare. “He’s a dangerous suspect. I got the dog out of the kennel, I’m not releasing him.”

With the man doing his job, Clint laughed. _“Dangerous? I’m a deaf man. Hardly America’s Most Wanted material. Separating me from my service dog shouldn’t even be legal. Now you are limiting my ability to comply with this questioning. If I call a lawyer it will be to sue you.”_

\--

Despite the arsenal of guns in his apartment and a strong sense of paranoia, Phil wasn’t that bad of a guy. He fixed up Clint’s nose, gave him some clean clothes and a good meal, and sat him down for a talk. Clint had expected, well he wasn’t sure what he expected. A normal person might suggest he get his life under control, but normal people didn’t nearly break your nose or point guns at your head.

The talk was a lot of struggling. Phil knew ASL for whatever reason, but Clint did not. It was slow, but they made it work. Clint told him about the circus and not having any marketable talents and apologized again, mostly for getting caught.

Phil asked him how good a shot he was and when Clint puffed out his chest and claimed to be the best, Phil asked him to prove it. He canceled whatever meetings he was supposed to have and took Clint out to a range that night.

When Clint didn’t miss a single shot Phil had one last question: Would he like to put those skills to use?

\--

Clint rubbed at his wrists when Danvers finally gave in and released the cuffs. He signed the most sarcastic of _“thanks”_ he could manage and reached down to scratch at Lucky’s head. His hands were still a bit shaky and his fingers only ever stilled their fidgeting when he put them to work with sign language, but touching his dog seemed to help.

_“Now, someone want to explain what I’m being charged with?”_

Danvers came around to his side of the table and flipped open the mystery folder. With a quick motion she spread out the images of at least a dozen different crime scenes. She pressed a manicured finger into the center image of a white business card with a deep purple arrow printed across the center and pinned to a window ledge. “We got your calling card, Barton. Didn’t think we’d call back?”

Clint looked at the photos and then between the translator and Danvers with something like panicked amusement. _“You think I did this? Lady, my hands shake and I need a dog to cross the street, but you think I’m what? Some international assassin?”_

“I never said the murders were international.”

_“Pick up a newspaper, detective.”_

\--

If someone had told seven year old Clint that his circus career was going to open up the doors for his hitman career, he probably would have had no idea what that even meant, but he’d have said it sounded cool.

Turned out Phil was a private handler of a small crew of, what he called, clean up artists. If you could figure out how to contact Phil and could wire the appropriate sums to foreign accounts, Phil would send someone in to take care of the mark. One of his men had backed out of the business to settle down, and while Phil didn’t approve, he respected the choice as long as their paths didn’t cross again in the field, but it did leave him short handed.

Phil supplied Clint with a state of the art bow, some high quality arrows, and even started training Clint on how to use rifles. He said it was an investment. With Phil, Clint found a stable life, learned ASL, and killed his first man at twenty-two.

None of this is on Clint’s record.

\--

“You’re unaccounted for during every murder, Barton. There’s not a single one you have an alibi for. In fact, during the times of these crimes you’re completely off the grid.”

Clint rubbed at his face. God this woman was infuriating. Attractive when she was angry, yes, but completely infuriating. _“I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who are unaccounted for during the murders of people they literally have no connection to.”_

“Your file says you used to be in the circus, before your accident. You were an archer.” Danvers was holding his file in her hands, flicking through the few sheets they had on him. She was fishing, pulling anything she could as a lead. No doubt she’d been at this case for months, maybe even years. The Marksman case was a career-ender. The guy left the same card at every nest for every assassination and still no one could trace him.

Danvers was the first to come so dangerously close.

_“Was. I gave it up. Haven’t held a bow in years. My nerves are shot if you hadn’t noticed.”_

“What about a gun?”

_“Bullets come out of the barrel, right? That’s all I’ve got.”_

\--

This is what’s on record: Clint left the circus after his accident and struggled for a few years between low rent apartments and most likely working shitty jobs under the table.

He joined local organizations that helped teach him ASL and found a job at a little book store called the Red Star, the file might even have one of their bookmarks that had their hours of operation and the image of a closed book with a red star on the cover.

He saved up money to get himself an actual apartment and opened a bank account that held a reasonable bit of savings. Through the help of his organizations, he was able to afford Lucky, his only regular companion and service dog.

His brother is FBI now, but they have had no contact since their youth.

Clint is thirty-three and has never filed for marriage and has never had so much as a bad parking ticket, though that’s partially because he does not have any vehicle registered to him.

Clinton Francis Barton is the ideal citizen to have come from such a rocky past. He is not, in anyway possible, an assassin.

Except for the fact that he is.

\--

Danvers was getting pissed. Clint had no idea if she thought this was going to be easy, but he suspected she had expected something other than his laid back refusal to cooperate. He would talk, he would answer questions, but he would not give up information. Not going to happen.

She was sitting on the edge of the table nearest him, her back to the translator. Clint was starting to think her perfume was one of the Victoria Secret things filled with so many scents that they were the aromatic equivalent of the color brown.

Her full focus was on Clint, which he thought was unfair. He had to keep one eye on the translator so he could figure out what she was saying. It was doing nothing to help his fidgeting.

“Alright,” she was saying. “How about this: we’ll give you a chance to clear your name. Tell us where you were during the murders.”

_“Half of these murders are over three years old. I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast two weeks ago.”_

“Then tell us what you’re up to when you disappear.”

Clint leaned back on his chair and pet at Lucky’s head before he answered. _“I travel when I can. I miss the freedom of the circus sometimes and my boss is pretty chill about vacation times. I borrow a car from a friend and just hit the road with Lucky for a bit. God this woman is pissing me off.”_

The translator’s lips pulled into a smile as he relayed everything up to the Lucky bit. Clint had to fight back his own grin.

“What friend?” Danvers asked. “And why are there no records of any of these trips?” And the translator added, _“you’ll be okay.”_

_“James Barnes, he works at the Red Star with me. And I pay in cash. Check your records, I don’t have a credit card. Something about paying for things with cash I may not have doesn’t sit well with me.”_

Danvers glanced at the two-way and was signaling to someone there. Probably running Bucky’s records. Clint just smiled at Lucky. They’d have fun with that, Bucky’s records were as clean as his.

Clint snapped his fingers twice to draw attention back to himself and met Danvers’s eyes. _“Look, I just want to go home. You can come in, look around, I don’t care if you have a warrant or not. I’ll cooperate. I just want to go home.”_

Her lips pressed together, but Clint watched her face gradually soften. She sighed and stood up, neatly collecting the files out in front of her. “Alright. We’ll get you an escort home.”

_“No cuffs this time? And Lucky stays with me?”_

“No cuffs and Lucky stays with you, promise.”

\--

Phil had a lot of influence in the world, a lot of friends who owned a lot of properties and had loose morals. It was easy to fudge the records for the right price and to fill in the gaps with truth.

Clint did spend a lot of time with deaf organizations after enlisting with Phil. He did save up to get Lucky. He did work at the Red Star.

The fact that the little shop was owned by Phil and only employed his crew of assassins, however, was all off the record.

\--

Clint and Lucky led the way up the stairs to his Brooklyn apartment. The elevator was in a constant state of disrepair and he was up on the forth floor and he would swear Danvers was muttering behind him.

His apartment was a cozy shoe box that had just enough room for him and Lucky. He stepped into the kitchen, unhooked Lucky from his workday harness, and smiled as the dog decided to go flop on the couch. Clint turned back to the translator, Detective Danvers, and her partner, Detective Brand. _“Knock yourselves out, detectives.”_

\--

They wouldn’t find a bow stashed away in his closet or a box of business cards with arrows on them. They would find an unmade bed in the only bedroom, dog bed that was untouched, and a lot of golden fur in the sheets.

They wouldn’t find any guns stashed under the couch or a display of his victims on the coffee table. They would find that his favorite show was Dog Cops, courtesy of the box collection in his tiny entertainment section, and that most of his couch was usually claimed by Lucky’s fat butt.

There would be no ticket stubs to foreign countries or even a passport, in his name or otherwise, but there was a sparsely filled kitchen and they might think he needed to go shopping. And maybe lay off the coffee.

What they wouldn’t know was that Clint didn’t live here. That this was a showroom apartment for someone who everyone believed was a modest, deaf, bachelor like Clint. He and Phil kept it up, and occasionally Clint stopped in to check the mail, but this wasn’t home.

\--

Danvers and Brand spoke to themselves for awhile and Clint put on a pot of water for dinner, trying to pretend this was all normal. Eventually the door opened and Brand stepped out into the hall.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Barton. We’ll be in touch.”

 _“You know where to find me,”_ he signed. He bid the detective a goodbye, gave the translator a wide-eyed ‘oh my god’ look as he thanked the man, and closed the door behind them both.

Clint leaned back on the door and pulled out his cellphone after a long moment of staring into the palms of his hands. He only had to go down two names before he selected ‘Bucky Barnes’ and pulled up a new text conversation.

 **Clint** : I need you to do me a favor.

 **Bucky** : Well, if it isn’t our little jail bird.

 **Clint** : You’re cute, Buck. Look, I need to hang around the Brooklyn place for awhile. They’ve probably got me under surveillance or something, but I need my hearing aids.

 **Clint** : The buzzing’s starting to get to me.

 **Bucky** : I’m covering the store, text Phil.

 **Clint** : Phil had to cover my ass in the station in case it went to shit. They think he’s a translator.

 **Bucky** : Got it. I’ll be there in twenty.

 **Clint** : You’re a champion!

\--

On his medical records, Clint was beyond the assistance of hearing aids. He purposefully flunked hearing tests, which wasn’t too hard, and relied heavily on lip reading and ASL to get by day to day.

In private, Clint wore his hearing aids. Typically he only wore them at home, where it was safe, or on hits, where it wasn’t safe at all. Phil would watch Lucky, and Clint would have to rely on the devices in his ears to survive wherever his employer sent him. It worked, and with doctors who could be kept off record for a price, the good detectives had no reason to suspect that Clint could hear much of anything.

He’d like to keep it that way, but the buzzing in his head really needed to go if he was going to be stuck here for awhile.

\--

True to his word, twenty minutes later there was a knock at Clint’s door and he opened it up to let Bucky in. Clint grinned at the little black case shoved into his hands and didn’t hesitate to snap it open and put the devices in. There was a piercing whistle as he adjusted them before the buzzing faded out and the rest of the world came into focus.

“-a mess, you know that?” he caught Bucky saying.

“Ah, shut up,” Clint muttered. He headed back into the kitchen and stirred at the bubbling pot. “You hungry?”

“You’re nearly caught and you’re making dinner?”

“Well the way I figure it,” Clint said, pointing the wooden spoon at him, “is that I’m not caught, my stomach is trying to eat itself, and the cops across the street probably figure you’re my boyfriend or something anyway so why not play along?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his face. “You’re something else, Barton.”

“Well I’d have played the cute and deaf straight man routine, but Nat is out in Portugal at the moment, so cute and deaf gay man it is.”

“You think you’re cute?” Bucky scoffed. He reached around Clint and pulled down two plates from the top cabinet. “That’s a laugh.”

“I’m adorable and you know it. Yo, get the drainer thing from over there.”

“It’s a colander.”

“It’s a drainer thing,” Clint said as he clicked off the flames. He watched Bucky resist rolling his eyes right out of his head, and dumped the pasta into the colander once it was dropped into the sink.

\--

Clint’s relationship with his fellow assassins was a curious thing.

They all had their separate apartments that Phil supplied, they all had the means to afford really nice apartments anywhere in the city, but they all lived together in a Manhattan penthouse.

This little domestic dinner routine with Bucky wasn’t entirely off from how they normally behaved; same scene, different setting.

\--

They each piled food up on their plates, covered it with helpings of the store bought sauce that was no where near as good as Bucky’s homemade stuff, and reclaimed the couch from Lucky. The dog plopped his face on the cushion and slapped both their legs with his tail in hope of scraps.

“So, you want to talk about what happened?”

Clint shrugged. “I don’t know how they even put my name to that shit, let alone got a warrant for my arrest. Whatever it was, didn’t hold.”

“You let anything slip?”

Clint snorted. “No. Phil was there the whole time. Even if I did sign something dumb, he would have covered it, but I didn’t. Thanks for your trust, Buck.”

Bucky nudged him, the metal of his prosthetic cool on Clint’s bare arm. “Just checking.”

\--

Like Clint, Bucky was another unlikely suspect for high stakes murder games.

He’d been a soldier back in the day. Never talked about it much, but Clint knew the basic story. He’d been in a POW camp where he lost his arm. Came back to the States after the camp was attacked and was honorably discharged from service.

He was lost until Phil found him.

And just like with Clint, Phil got him what he needed to get back on his feet and got him a job that involved a lot of shooting and occasionally strangling someone with his prosthetic hand.

But he was a wounded American hero, who would suspect him?

\--

They finished up their dinner and Bucky broke out a couple of beers from the fridge while Clint fed Lucky leftovers. Once everyone was full and happy, Lucky scrambled back up on the couch and flopped down on both of the assassins.

Bucky let out a breath of air. “Jesus, Clint. I don’t think he needs any more pasta.”

“Neither do you, jerk.”

“Did you just call me fat?”

Clint grinned and ruffled Lucky’s ears. “What was that? Hearing aids must be on the frtiz.”

Bucky shoved at him, but they were both grinning.

\--

It was easy to relax like this, to forget about their night jobs and to just be a couple of guys with a dog. If they were home, the couch would be bigger and Nat would probably be curled between them with a book. And as long as that perfect little family wasn’t disrupted, things would be okay.

If Clint had to spend a week or something here until things blew over to protect that family, then he would.

\--

Bucky’s phone buzzed and there was a struggle to maneuver his hand under Lucky to answer it. He swiped his flesh thumb over the screen and scanned it before looking up at Clint. “Phil’s got a job for me in three days.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need your gear for it.”

Clint laughed. “That’s one way to clear my good name.”

“You haven’t changed the number to your safe right?”

“I’d forget it if I did,” Clint said. “So where’s Marksman off to?”

“Washington.”

“Oh Christ, glad that’s you and not me. I fucking hate jobs in Washington.”

Bucky shrugged. “Job’s a job.”

“Yeah well, just try not to ruin my rep while you’re down there,” Clint muttered. He grabbed a remote and threw on the DVR. “Got last night’s episode of Dog Cops. You in?”

“Caught it this morning. You’re going to love-”

“Spoilers!”

\--

These were the facts that appeared on no file but Phil’s: Clint, Bucky, and Natasha were the best at what they did. There were few other trained killers who could compete with them.

By all accounts, the three should be isolated from the rest of the world, loners who trusted no one entirely, not even Phil. And yet, beyond all reason, they trusted each other.

And perhaps because of that trust, they had something to live for when the rest of the world seemed determined to take everything from them.


	2. Home With You

Three days later, Clint made sure he and Lucky were enjoying a nice little stroll past the NYPD. Roughly forty minutes after that the news stations were all a twitter with the public assassination of a Texan senator in Washington. Talk was already leaking through the net that this might be another hit from the assassin for hire known as Marksman, but that nothing could be proven just yet.

Bucky made it home the next night and Clint was glad that the penthouse was no longer filled by just him and Lucky. They did their male bonding thing, pretended they weren’t bothered by the last missing piece in their little puzzle family, and two days later were happily welcoming Natasha back into the city.

Her pale skin was beautifully tanned from her week away in Portugal and her usual red curls were dyed almost black, but she was home.

She was bombarded by Lucky as soon as she got in and smiled softly, probably the first real smile in a week. She left her suitcase by the door and moved through the apartment to press a kiss to Bucky’s jaw as he cooked and one to the top of Clint’s head as he lounged on the couch.

“Missed you,” Clint said, squeezing her hand.

She squeezed back and cocked him a smile, “I heard you got yourself into some trouble, _myshka_.”

He rolled his eyes and dropped his head back on the couch. “Yes, Christ. The police got nosy. We fixed it. It’s over. Am I going to get the ‘good little assassin’ talk from you too?”

Bucky laughed from the kitchen and Natasha pulled away with the smile still on her lips. “I’m going to change,” she said. “I reek of cigar smoke.” And with that she disappeared into the bedroom.

Like Bucky and Clint, Natasha was deadly with a gun, but she didn’t use rifles like Clint typically did. She was a more hands on assassin more like Bucky, but Nat got close to her marks through seduction and deception. Her kills were intimate and she went through more blood stained clothes than Bucky or Clint ever did.

They listened to the shower run and Clint poked around the kitchen in an attempt to help that got him smacked with a spatula until he retreated to the couch again to watch Bucky from a safe distance. He had his hair pulled back into a stubby little ponytail as he worked. His red tee was old, faded, and worn, just like his jeans. His feet were bare as he moved around the kitchen and he occasionally swore when the oil bubbled and hit his good arm. This was home.

When Natasha came out of the shower, Clint glanced back and grinned at her. She moved like a dancer between rooms of the apartment, every little move controlled and perfect in a way that Bucky and Clint could never match. She wore a black cami and gray shorts that were rolled up around her hips. Her hair was a riot of messy wet strands, there wasn’t an ounce of make up or jewelry on her, and she was incredibly beautiful none the less. This was home.

Clint dragged the coffee table closer to the couch and slid down to the floor. He leaned back on the couch and laughed as Lucky clambered up and laid his head on Clint’s. His dog was a lazy, gluttonous, bum, but this was home.

Nat had three beers in her hand when she slid to the ground next to Clint. He kissed her cheek and took one of them off her hands while she set the other two down.

Bucky, bless him, had the balance of a carnie when it came down to it. He finished up cooking, brought three full plates of burgers and fries to the table, and set them down before taking up a seat on Clint’s other side. And god, Clint might already kill for a living, but he would _definitely_ kill for Bucky’s burgers.

“Your dog’s staring at me,” he said.

“You didn’t bring him any.”

Natasha pulled a fry from Clint’s plate and gave it to Lucky who just about inhaled the poor thing. She chuckled and ruffled his head before she made herself comfortable once again and turned her attention to her own plate.

They softly teased each other through out the night and enjoyed their usual post-mission dinner together. Clint helped Bucky clean up and the two of them joined Natasha on the overstuffed couch for a movie. As usual, before the film was over it devolved into a cuddle pile that had Natasha asleep and curled between her boys, and Bucky’s hand in Clint’s hair.

Clint didn’t need much. Whether it was his crummy Brooklyn apartment or their beautiful Manhattan headquarters, all he really needed was them. They were beautiful and deadly, but it was here in their arms that Clint was safe. They were all safe. And that was what made it home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is Bucky's story.


End file.
